First night back after leave. The lobby was empty, the city's one tall building dark against the window.
Someone had left a tomato pincushion on my keyboard—bright red, with a little green stem. The day clerk's idea of a joke. I'm the only one who still sews buttons.
I held it, and thought of my mother. She worked nights too, cleaning offices. She never finished high school.
When I graduated—first in the family, ever—she wasn't there. Died two years before. But she'd saved for years to buy me a sewing kit. That pincushion was in it.
I set it beside the register. A small thing, a tomato, on an ordinary night.
By 2 a.m., not one guest had checked in. I sat there, and for the first time in weeks, I didn't feel alone.